I didn't realize that I really didn't know that much about Lincoln and the story behind the Emancipation Proclamation. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to read this book. I can only imagine the struggles that he went through as he prepared this proclamation, all while dealing with his cabinet members that often times had other ideas on what to do with this subject.

It took me a little while to read the book, as I kept going back to pages to reread them in order to really understand what was happening. However, I'm glad that I did - my prior lack of knowledge on this subject was very evident to me, and I wanted to ensure that by the time I was done with the book that I would really understand what was happening - I feel I succeeded with that.

For anyone that is interested in this subject I would highly recommend that you add this book to the list of your reading materials - you won't be disappointed. ( )

Sometimes in the bargain bin of remainder books you can find some jewels. This short history and essay on Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation is really such a find. I had seen the September 1862 draft in Lincoln’s handwriting on display at the local museum several years ago. This copy is held in the NY State Archives and was on a touring exhibition across the state. While I expected to breeze through the museum of our small town I found instead a line of viewers lasting over an hour. In the two day’s on exhibit there were over seven thousand people who saw it.

Brewster takes us through Lincoln’s thinking and aims in issuing the proclamation on January 1, 1863. He reminds us that Lincoln’s views on inter-relationship of slavery, race and the rebellion were quite complex; the image held in history of Lincoln as “The Great Emancipator” grossly over simplifies his purposes in dealing with slavery. Lincoln was deeply opposed on moral grounds to slavery. Notwithstanding his personal views, he held that the Constitution did permit slavery. His longstanding political position on slavery was that banning the expansion of slavery beyond the fifteen states in which it existed was a proper act under the Constitution. As repugnant to him as slavery was, he held that slaves were “property” and the Constitution protected property owners from confiscation without due process. The war then was not against slavery; it was to preserve the union of states. It was to return the rebelling states under the aegis of the Constitution; the states had no legal right to sever themselves from the union.

Union generals had twice taken action to free slaves in territory under union military control. In both cases, Lincoln countermanded these decisions. He determined that it was only "military necessity" that could justify seizing property and that such necessity at those times did not exist He was also quite concerned that such actions would alienate the four Border States who remained in the union despite being slave states.

Through mid 1862 the union’s armies had been faring poorly. Lincoln began mulling over measures the government could take to pressure the South to abandon its rebellion and which could materially hurt its war-making resources. He struck upon the idea that the war powers provision of the Constitution gave him executive authority to seize property that was supporting the insurrectionists. Though there was a question whether this power was the executive’s or the legislature’s it could be reasonably argued that as commander-in-chief the president had such power. He shared a draft proclamation with his cabinet members. They counseled him that it was unwise to issue such an order until the union armies gained a victory in the field. This showing came after the bloody battle of Antietam -- the bloodiest single day in the history of American wars -- When the union armies repelled Lee's invasion of Maryland. Shortly after, Lincoln announced his intention to issue the proclamation on January 1, 1863 and offered the rebel states the chance to return to the fold before then, thus preserving slavery.

It is critically important to note the distinction between Lincoln’s personal moral views on slavery and his adherence to what he held to be the limits of legal authority under the constitution. Brewster reminds us that Lincoln’s actions were always grounded in his belief in the supremacy of the Constitution's prescriptions and proscriptions on government powers.

Brewster also points out that Lincoln was a racist. He thought it impossible for whites and blacks to ever live together harmoniously. He supported the idea that colonization of freed blacks to Africa or Central America was a preferred solution to the forecasted problems of race relations in the country. He clearly had no sense that blacks could rise to equal status in white society. The image arising after Lincoln’s death of his beneficent feelings toward black people is the result of mythologizing the great man.

While describing the evolution of the emancipation decision Brewster also takes the reader on some interesting side excursions. His analysis of Lincoln’s religiosity is well done. Lincoln claimed to be Christian although he belonged to no church and he had non doctrinaire views much like those of Jefferson. Despite his individualistic, iconoclastic thinking on God and the divinity of Christ, it seems that as the war went on his references to events reflecting the will of God and his actions as manifestations of God’s will began to increase. Brewster places this change starting around the time of his young son Willie’s death, a devastating blow to the Lincoln’s.

Another interesting digression describes the evolution of military strategy. It is thought that in the early years the military leaders held to the ideas of Antoine-Henri Jomini, a disciple of Napoleon who considered the movements of armies in the field as more like moves on a chessboard where position and maneuvering rather than violent action predominated. This was a gentler approach to war making where the capture of place, e.g. Richmond, was more important than the destruction of the enemy’s army. Lincoln’s frustration with McClellan’s over cautiousness derived from the latter’s use of his forces in this context. Lincoln's chief-of-staff, Maj. General Henry Halleck – about whom, because he was a native of my hometown, I have studied and written – was a leading military scholar on Jominian theory. Lincoln delved deeply into military strategy and became insightful on the limitations of accepted principles. He and Halleck changed their views as the war progressed and it became increasingly destructive and boldly executed. Contrasts in how McClellan and Sherman handled their armies show this change most starkly.

The risks in Lincoln’s gamble were three-fold. To the abolitionists the emancipation clearly could be held as a half measure. The slaves were declared free only where their freedom could not be immediately enforced, i.e. in the states in rebellion where union authority did not prevail; they were not to be freed in the Border States. Regarding these states (Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware and Maryland) there was real worry that the prospect that slavery eventually would be abolished there too might drive them away from the union cause. The second concern was that support in the North, grounded on the idea that the war was a fight to preserve the union, would dissolve if the war aims were perceived to shift to the freeing of slaves. Many people in the North were indifferent to, or even opposed, to the idea that the eradication of slavery was important. Finally, there was the problem of what would be the status of freed slaves after the conflict concluded. If slaves were freed as a war measure on what legal basis could their new status be sustained after the war was over? (The recent movie telling the story of the passage of thirteenth amendment deals with this issue.)

We know now, of course, that Lincoln’s gamble paid off. While the Emancipation Proclamation was narrowly drafted as a war power decision legal under the Constitution, it must have been exceedingly clear to everyone that slavery could not continue after the rebellion was put down. ( )

Many people think they know the story of the Emancipation Proclamation.: Lincoln freed the slaves and is the Great Emancipator for all time. In fact the story is much more complicated than that and we are fortunate that we have “Lincoln’s Gamble” to unravel it for us. It is the account of the six months between July 12, 1862, when Lincoln first expressed the intention of freeing the slaves, and January 1, 1863 when he issued the Emancipation.

Lincoln was a man of his time and circumstance, not ours. A product of the pioneer west, he believed neither that one man should own another nor that the races could live together in harmony. A proponent of emancipation and migration, he lectured free blacks on how their inferiority necessitated their removal from the United States to, perhaps Africa, from which they had been forcibly removed, or Central America.

His circumstances were not of his own making. The war was going poorly and his generals, McClellan and Burnside, were failing him. Committed to preserving the Union, he had to maintain the political support of abolitionists, who demanded the immediate eradication of slavery, and those who wanted the Union preserved as it was, part slave and part free. The President had his own demons, depression, an unstable wife and the loss of a beloved son in February 1862.

Author Todd Brewster picks apart the drafts of the Emancipation to show what it really was, not a morally impelled enactment, but a carrot and stick based on military necessity. The Southern States could retain their slaves if they would cease the rebellion prior to January 1, 1863. When they did not the only those slaves in areas still in rebellion were freed, not for their own benefit, but to weaken the military strength of the South.

The reader comes away with an appreciation of an idea and a document that evolved in its provisions prior to issue and its significance thereafter. It changed the purpose of the War, provided the North with a new source of military manpower, altered relations within the South and influenced the legacy of the schism that resonates to our day.

Before I sum up, there is one thing I want to mention. I rarely read footnotes, but this book is an exception. Whereas many just identify the source, many of these place the information in context and place them in longer quotations. I found the ones on these pages to be unusually enlightening.

I am glad that the author offered me a copy of “Lincoln’s Gamble” to read and review. While not a long read, it draws the reader into an examination of the flow of influences that resulted in the Emancipation Proclamation. The mind’s eye is stimulated to see the scenes described. It is a valuable aid in understanding t this crucial six months in our nation’s history. ( )

Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America The Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War is an in-depth study of what we know of Abraham Lincoln during the six months prior to January 1, 1863 when the Emancipation Procalmation freed all the slaves in the rebelling South. The book studies how much Lincoln thought and debated with himself and others the usefulness of such a move. The risks were significant, changed the Civil War from a war to bring the Union together again to a war to free the slaves also. However, the Emancipation Proclamation stands as a war-time Presidential declaration - meant to hasten the end of the War.
A difficult book to read, much of the prose is very dense and requires a good deal of thought, took me 10 days to read it, but in the end was worth the work. I give this book 4.5 stars.

So often when people are pivotal in the accomplishment of something great they end up becoming something mythical in our imaginations. We begin to see them as caricatures, good or bad, and very often miss the fact that they are people. If this is true of anyone in American history, it is especially true of Abraham Lincoln. The Western world has become inundated with Lincoln material from the time he stepped into office. As Todd Brewster points out, we have seen,

Lincoln books on every conceivable aspect of his life and career, many of them setting out, Parson Weems style, to create the Lincoln legend: “Honest Abe,” “Abe, the Redeemer,” “Lincoln: Man of the People,” “Master of Men,” and, of course, “The Great Emancipator.” Thankfully, the trend long ago abated. A tempering of the Lincoln myth occurred in the post–World War II era, with some authors going too far in the other direction, laying him out to be racist, incompetent, devious, and certainly no subject for national reverence. Still, the cascade of Lincoln volumes has continued unabated, and a glance through the entire list shows just how inventive the researching mind can be. In addition to traditional biographies and histories there is The Life of Abraham Lincoln for Young People: Told in Words of One Syllable; The Personal Finances of Abraham Lincoln; Abraham Lincoln on the Coming of the Caterpillar Tractor; and, first published only a decade ago, The Physical Lincoln, including the following chapters: “Lips,” “Gut,” “Skull,” “Muscles,” “Skin,” “Eyes,” “Height,” and “Joints.” According to World Cat, the global online library catalog, 23,274 books and updated and new editions of books, have been written on Lincoln. (So how original am I? As you read this, you are holding the 23,275th.)

I will have to be honest, like the subject of this book, and point out that I fall just a bit short of having read 23,000 books on Abraham Lincoln. I feel safe in saying that Lincoln’s Gamble by Brewster, however, is one of the good ones. Taking “one slice of Lincoln’s life”, the greatest slice, Brewster dives into the very real world that this very real person played the pivotal role in this very great event.

Brewster takes a focused look at the pivotal time of Lincoln’s presidency, the leading up to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. This “in-between moment” for Lincoln would end up cementing his mythical, hero, untouchable status in the minds of many, if not most. This time, wrought with life, politics, war, fear, human frailties, human emotions, human prejudice, pragmatism, shortsightedness, grand vision, support, criticism, success, and failure—this was the time of Lincoln’s Gamble and this was the moment that the man Abe became the hero, the emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.

Brewster does a great job setting the stage for Lincoln’s Gamble. He shows the world: cultural, political, and economic in which Lincoln found himself living. He shows the men: generals, politicians, and friends that Lincoln found himself leading. He shows the hardships: war, death, marriage, and parenting, that Lincoln found himself enduring. All of this to set the scene for the greatest decision Lincoln would ever have to make—a decision that would affect millions for generations. Maybe we elevate Lincoln as we do simply because he was able to persevere through all of this and actually make a decision, or even just keep going! For a man to take an action like this in a cultural and personal vacuum would have been difficult enough, to do it in the midst of all that he did was nothing short of amazing. And Brewster takes the reader on a tour Lincoln’s struggles and helps the reader to feel a bit of what Lincoln had to have felt during this time.

What do we find in all of this? Abraham Lincoln was not perfect! Don’t let pennies and $5 bills fool you, he was a real person with real flaws and real struggles. For instance, would Lincoln be considered a racist today? He was not an abolitionist, he favored colonization of the slaves, and saw white man as superior to “Negroes”. But does that make him a terrible person, or simply a person. One great benefit of this work is to see that Lincoln was a sinner, just like the rest of us. Not only that, but it helps the reader to see that to impose 21st century norms on a 19th century figure is anachronistic and utterly unfair. The caricature of Honest Abe the altruistic abolitionist is naïve and inaccurate. But the fact that this crooked stick was used to draw a mighty straight line should give us pause and bring praise to our mouths for as long as we remember! By the end of this book we should be able to say with W.E.B. Dubois that, “I love Lincoln. Not because he was perfect, but because he was not and yet triumphed.”

*I received a review copy of this book from the publisher to offer a review.
*Quotes are from an ARC from the publisher. ( )